Materials engineers play an important role in creating the products we use every day. They create, process, test, and study materials to make new products. About half of all materials engineers work in manufacturing industries and collaborate frequently with other engineers, such as mechanical, electrical, chemical, and civil.
What is Materials Engineering?
Materials Science and Engineering is the application of chemistry, physics, and math to create, process, test, and study materials.
Materials engineers often collaborate with other engineering disciplines, including mechanical, electrical, & chemical. As we focus more on environmental sustainability, materials engineers will play an important role!
Subdisciplines
Within materials engineering, there are also specialities. Some of these include:
- Ceramic engineers
- Composites engineers
- Metallurgical engineers
- Plastics engineers
- Semiconductor processing engineers
Careers
Materials engineering is expected to increase by 8% in the next decade.
About half of all materials engineers work in manufacturing industries developing and creating new materials and processes.
The average salary for materials engineers is $95,000 and the average entry-level salary is $67,500.
Education
The typical entry-level education is a Bachelor’s Degree in materials engineering or a related field.
Material engineers may pursue graduate school or obtain their professional engineering license to advance to senior positions
Materials engineers take the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam after graduating from an EAC/ABET-accredited program
After 4 years of post-college work experience, materials engineers take the Practice of Engineering (PE) exam to earn their Professional Engineer license
Duties and Skills
- Prepare proposals, budgets, & reports
- Design & test processing procedures
- Monitor how materials perform & evaluate how they deteriorate
- Determine causes of product failure & develop solutions
- Evaluate the impact of materials processing on the environment